Chapter Six
It took the best part of a week for Naomi to stop scowling when she caught sight of the bowl on the coffee table. Fraser explained who had made it, which she greeted with an indifferent sniff, and he’d even shown her Maura’s sculpture on display in the Royal Botanic Garden. ‘Yes, but what is the bowl for?’ Naomi had asked when he’d finished. ‘It’s just going to sit there and gather dust.’
‘It won’t, because we’ll dust it,’ Fraser had replied. ‘And it doesn’t have to have a purpose. It’s a thing of beauty – isn’t that enough?’
She’d opened her mouth to object and then closed it again, being self-aware enough to recognize that to most people, her own job involved looking beautiful and not much else. ‘Isn’t there somewhere else it can go?’ she went on, changing tack. ‘It might get broken there.’
‘Not if we’re careful,’ he said reasonably. ‘Besides, I want it somewhere I can see it.’
She’d given in eventually, not with good grace but with a mutinous muttering that Fraser had decided it was best to ignore. He hadn’t told her about the ghosts Maura was making for him; anything that hinted he was putting down roots, making their move to Edinburgh more long-term, would elicit an even more stormy response. It was something he was going to have to face head-on at some point, and decisions would have to be made about their future together, but he didn’t think either of them were ready for the difficult conversations that would inevitably follow. For now, he was content to fine-tune the Dead Famous tours, test out new content when he could and build the business into the most sought-after tour in Edinburgh.
It was all he could do not to contact Maura to ask how she was getting on with the designs, however. He hadn’t heard from her since the morning after the tour, when he’d emailed to thank her for coming and she’d agreed to come up with a couple of prototype ghosts. He knew the process took time but he couldn’t help feeling a tickle of impatience as the days slid by. Creativity couldn’t be rushed, he reminded himself. When Maura had something to show him, she would let him know.
In the meantime, he’d kept himself busy during the last few days of January by catching up with the friends he’d lost touch with during his long absence. Two of his oldest friends had been in the same year at St Ignatius – one, Michael, had stayed in Edinburgh, building a property portfolio, but Graeme had travelled. Like Fraser, he’d recently returned to his old stomping ground but his circumstances were different, having just finished with a messy divorce. The three of them had seen each other sporadically over the years but had slipped back into friendship as though no time at all had passed, and tried to meet once a month for a pint and a chat.
‘You’ll never guess who I ran into on New Year’s Eve,’ Fraser said as they settled down with their pints in the World’s End pub.
‘Taylor Swift,’ Graeme suggested, taking a sip of his beer.
‘George Clooney,’ Michael put in, equally deadpan. ‘I hear he loves Hogmanay in Edinburgh.’
‘Ha ha,’ Fraser said, without rancour. ‘You should both be at the Fringe, you’re so funny.’
He waited, sipping his own pint and knowing they would not be able to resist the bait for long.
‘So?’ Michael demanded after a short, impatient silence. ‘Are you going to wait until next Hogmanay to tell us?’
Fraser hid a smile. ‘Someone you might know, although I’m not sure you’ll remember her. Maura McKenzie. She was in our year at school.’
Michael’s face wrinkled in thought. ‘Nope. I’ve got nothing.’
‘I do,’ Graeme said slowly. ‘Dark-haired girl. Never spoke much.’
‘That’s her,’ Fraser said. ‘She spent most of her time in the art block.’
Michael nodded sagely. ‘That’s why I don’t remember her. The art teacher hated me – in fact, I was banned from the art block for knocking over someone’s GCSE project.’
Fraser felt his eyebrows shoot up. ‘I don’t remember that.’
His friend shrugged. ‘You were too busy playing at Shakespeare in the drama studio.’ He gave Fraser a sidelong look. ‘I always reckoned you fancied the teacher, that’s why you were so keen.’
Fraser cast his mind back. The drama teacher had been encouraging and he had liked her, but she had been old, or at least the age he was now, and that wasn’t what had kept him coming back to the drama studio. It had been his love of performing, the feeling he got when he slipped into someone else’s skin and stepped into the limelight. That had been what drove him to work as hard as he had on passing his exams and winning a coveted place at drama school. It was perhaps a little ironic that he had fallen so badly out of love with the thing that had once meant everything to him.
‘So what’s Maura been up to since school?’ Graeme asked. ‘Have the years been as cruel to her as the rest of us?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Fraser said mildly. ‘And no, the years have not been cruel to her. The opposite, in fact. She’s doing very well for herself.’
Graeme perked up. ‘Is she single? Can you get me her number?’
He shook his head. ‘Sadly not single. She has a strapping great rugby player of a boyfriend.’
‘Shame,’ Graeme said, subsiding into his pint. ‘I was hoping you were about to offer me an excuse to get off the dating apps. They’re driving me to drink.’
Fraser felt a stab of sympathy for him. It couldn’t be easy to start over, especially when your ex-wife was happily coupled up with a new man. But Maura was so far out of Graeme’s league that there was no way he stood a chance of a date with her, even if she had been single. Fraser wasn’t about to dent his friend’s already fragile ego any further, however, so he said nothing.
Michael had been tapping at his phone. ‘Maura McKenzie,’ he said, holding out the screen to show a Google page filled with hits. ‘Bloody hell, she can’t have looked like that at school.’
It was exactly what Fraser had thought when she’d first introduced herself, although he wasn’t about to admit that now. ‘She’s a really talented potter, makes some incredible things. I’m hoping she’ll make some ghosts for the tour website – I think the tourists will snap them up.’
‘Good plan,’ Michael said, still scrolling through the search hits. ‘And I suppose the fact that she’s so easy to look at helps too, right?’
Fraser sighed. ‘Not everything is about looks, Micky.’
The other man grunted. ‘Says the man with the model for a girlfriend.’
‘What’s your point?’ Fraser asked, raising an eyebrow.
Michael looked up. ‘No point, Fraser. I’m just saying you always were a sucker for a pretty face.’
Graeme looked from one friend to the other. ‘Ignore him, Fraser. He’s just jealous because he looks like a bull’s arse.’ He paused to stare at the multiple pictures of Maura currently adorning Michael’s phone. ‘Although she is fine, I’ll grant you that. I don’t blame you for sniffing around.’
Fraser put down his pint. ‘I’m not sniffing around. It’s a business arrangement, one that hasn’t even been finalized, if you must know. And I believe I mentioned the fact that she has a boyfriend – just as I have Naomi.’ He bristled across the table at them. ‘I wish I’d never told you now.’
To their credit, both his friends looked shamefaced. ‘Sorry,’ Michael said.
‘Aye, and I’m sorry too,’ Graeme admitted. ‘I don’t get out much these days.’
Sitting back in his seat, Fraser felt his irritation drain away. Wouldn’t his friends in London have reacted in similar ways? And the truth was that Maura was very attractive – if he was brutally honest with himself then he had to admit he would have been interested, had they both been single. But perhaps it was better not to think about that. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, and glanced up at the big screen in one corner of the bar, where a football match was playing in silence. It was time to change the subject. ‘So, what do you reckon? Have Dundee got any chance this season?’
The message he’d been anticipating arrived a few days later.
Hi Fraser,
I’ve got a couple of sample ghosts for you to look at. Do you want to drop by the studio or would you prefer to meet somewhere?
All best,